While reading the ending of Candide, I couldn’t help but think about what role it is exactly
that Candide plays in his story and our understanding of it. Throughout the
book, Candide seems to be pushed around like a ragdoll, constantly a victim of
circumstance, but despite all of the terrible things he goes through, he always
ends up okay, allowing for him to be a humorous character rather than a tragic
one. This realization reminded me of an essay I read last year by Ruth Nevo
titled “Toward a Theory of Comedy,” in which she writes of the comic hero as
“at once victor and victim” (328).
Candide appears to be the perfect
epitome of this characterization. While he falls victim to the most horrific of
situations, he always comes out on top and ultimately, by the end of the tale,
he changes, realizing his true potential and ability to change his situation
and work toward a better one. If Candide did not grow throughout the book or
did not make it out of his many calamities okay, he would be a character that warranted
pity more than laughter and therefore would not fulfill Voltaire’s comic
pursuit.
We encounter another comic hero in
John Kasaipwalova’s short story, “Betel Nut Is Bad Magic for Airplanes.” While Candide, gave us a third-person
narrative telling the many adventures of our comic hero, Kasaipwalova writes a
first-person narrative from the very perspective of the hero. This first-person
presentation allows for even more comedy as we are given the perspective of the
person at the root of the comedy. Even with this difference, though, the
narrator still can be seen as both victor and victim as he is oppressed by the
police and their “law [that is] laid down by the lawful government in the book”
(615) (I found this line
particularly hilarious with its redundancy) but in the end comes out a victor
chewing his betel nut in the back of the police car as they drive him back to
the university.
In Nevo’s essay, she writes
particularly about comedy of manners, wherein the comic hero is portrayed as a
victim of vice and is driven entirely by one overruling moral flaw which puts
them in unfortunate situations (much like the narrator’s mother in King’s Borders with her pride), but by looking
at other texts, I think it is clear that this victor/victim theory can apply to
much more than just that. For example, to go back to King’s story, I would say
that the narrator is also a comic hero being made a victim, not of his own
vice, but of his mother’s while in the end becoming victorious in his finally
being able to visit Salt Lake City.
This duality of comic characters is
crucial to the success of the humor of a tale; a character cannot be all one or
the other, because the entire tone of the piece would change drastically. If Candide
were all victor and no victim, then Voltaire would have written a small epic,
while on the other hand, if he were completely victim, it would be a tragedy.
Instead (and lucky for us), Voltaire created a character with a certain balance
of both qualities which allows us to feel a slight sadness or disgust at his
follies but also to laugh when, despite his hardships, he jumps right back up
again, (almost) unscathed.
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